Periodic Reporting for period 1 - KaIROS (Keeping and Increasing Resilience Opportunities and Sustainability of communities against earthquakes)
Période du rapport: 2018-09-01 au 2020-08-31
In order to test the computational tools developed in the project, The ER along with other researchers of the host institution performed a risk assessment of the reinforced concrete buildings with waffle slabs of the Eixample, which is a well-known and emblematic neighbourhood in Barcelona. Building models were generated by considering information provided by researchers of the host institution. The results showed that these buildings are highly vulnerable, as expected.
Other subjects related to increasing sustainability and resilience by reducing vulnerability was also investigated. In line with this, the most relevant seismic codes worldwide were reviewed to analyse which parts of them could benefit from the results of the project. After this review, the ER realized that the best contribution to guidelines should be oriented to enhance the predictability of EDPs highly used in the design of structures. In addition, the study of the near-fault effect of ground motion records in design was also a subject that could be benefit from this enhancing in efficiency. Therefore, an investigation was developed focused on identifying these EDPs for both near- and far- fault records.
Social issues were also of importance during the project. Research on the exposure of women to several types of hazards has shown that gender inequality influences their risk to natural disasters. For instance, discrimination and injustice are greater in developing countries, in which people living below the poverty threshold face greater exposure to hazard. Seventy percent of the population in these countries are women. Moreover, several of them are housewives in charge of household chores and raising children. This makes the impact of disasters not gender neutral as their dwellings are highly vulnerable to several hazards, and women spend more time at home than men.
Weakening and directionality effects were also studied during the project. In order to analyse the weakening effect, the ER and researchers of the host institutions analysed signals coming from a measuring campaign of the dynamic properties of a building damaged by the Lorca earthquake. In order to include the directionality effect, the concept of consistent rotation was studied.
Finally, several computational tools that can be used to address several subjects of the Earthquake Engineering were developed. These computer programs allow to run probabilistic realizations of building models by considering as input random ground motion records selected from databases.